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Published: September 4th 2007
Finally, after 30 + hours of travel time we have arrived in Mexico to sweltering heat!
Spent Friday orientating (read: swimming and sunbathing…) around the playa before booking ourselves on a couple of tours for the weekend.
Saturday we went to Tulum..amazing Mayan ruins right on the beach. Part of the tours was a promise of a swim at the beach, and given the heat (about mid thirties) this was something we were looking forward to, However…after Hurricane Dean, the stairs leading down to the beach were missing..and the beach closed. Not impressed!
Sunday was the long tour to Chichen Itza, picked up at 7:50am and dropped back at close to 8pm, it’s about 300km from where we are in the Playa. We had the cliché tour bus full of package tourists, herded in and out of the buffet lunch, and the joking Mexican guide who laughed after his own jokes twice (as he translated them). On the way there we had the amazing experience of swimming in a cenote - an underground waterhole about 50 metres deep and full of little catfish. The water was amazingly clear and surprisingly cool (as opposed to the freezing we were expecting).
Speaking of warm water, I have to say, the sea here is so warm it is not even refreshing to swim in! So different from NZ waters.
Chichen Itza itself (one of the new wonders of the modern world) was pretty amazing, the main pyramid is still so intact, although it has recently been closed so you can no longer climb it (after too many tourists plummeted to their deaths).
Today we started Spanish school (on our one week course). It was pretty scary, not knowing much Spanish at all, but our teachers were quitelenient today. From tomorrow though, they are only going to speak in Spanish which should be interesting! The classrooms are open air thatched roof areas in a garden which makes it the nicest learning environment we’ve been in. Hopefully by the end of the week we will have some basic Spanish to get us through the rest of the trip anyway. We are in a class by ourselves in the morning and a mixed class of 6 in the afternoon, so far we have managed to bluff our way through, so fingers crossed the rest of the week is the same.
Have heard the
news of another hurricane coming, although people here say that Hurricane Dean was pretty minor, so hopefully we will miss the worst of it. Lets hope for more sunshine.
Back to school for the rest of the week then off to Belize in the weekend. Will update then. Hope everyone is good xx
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Naes
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Kia-ora Nosaj dna Akiram
wow, bro the water looks primo - glad to hear you arrived safely, let me know when you find that secret surf spot of the gulf of Me-hi-co. The photo's look awesome, good old Canon. Anyway have fun at school, (haze tried to learn Spanish after he met that Brazilian girl, you guys could have a conversation) have fun go hard!! Voya con dios Amigo's